Herat court orders 80 lashes to man

HERAT CITY (PAN): An urban court ordered 80 lashes to a man for drinking alcohol in western Herat province, an official said on Friday.

The ruling came after the man had confessed to drinking the banned beverage, said Abdul Rassoul Mansoor, the judge who ordered the lashes. He told reporters in Herat City, the provincial capital, that similar sentences were handed down to six other men since last March.

"The whipping would help keep the society in order. Those leaders who do not enforce the orders of Allah, their regimes fall," a spiritual leader, Ainuddin Jalal Jalali, remarked. He said alcohol was prohibited in Islam because it disrupted the system of a society.